DIY Unhappy Birthday Party Hats

May 22nd is a holiday in my book – the birthday of one Steven Patrick Morrissey. This year my friends and I are celebrating with a vegan dinner and then dancing at Delilah’s where DJ Tony (no, not that Tony) will be spinning Moz/Smiths tunes all night. I decided to make the night extra special by making some mopey party hats, which I’ve slowly been assembling all week.

I made about 20 of them so I can share with friends and strangers. It’s super easy, so I thought I’d post a how-to so you too can celebrate Mozzer’s 56th in style.

Supplies:

Black card stock

Black pom-poms or other accents

Double stick tape

Hot glue/glue gun

Black ribbon

Stapler/staples

Sticker paper (or white paper and glue sticks)

Tips:

I bought black poster board at the dollar store. You could also use scrapbook paper – this is the main material for your hats so you want sturdy, yet bendable paper.

While you’re at the Dollar Store, buy a pack of party hats. You can tear one open to use as a template, plus you can re-use the elastic if you don’t want to buy ribbon.

Yes, there ARE vegan glues out there. Elmer’s is vegan and they even make glue sticks now.

Step #4 illustrated

How-to:

If you’re using a cheap party hat to start with, carefully unglue or staple it and remove the elastic. Use this as your template and simply cut the shape out of your black card stock. If you don’t have a party hat, download a template.

Once you’ve cut out as many hats as you’ll want, roll them into shape and secure with double stick tape. You could also glue them, but then you’ll have to hold each one while it dries and that’s annoying.

I added a small black pom-pom to the tip of each hat. You can do whatever you want to yours – line the part that will touch your head with pom-poms, use black glitter… your hat, your rules. I wanted mine to be as bleak and sad looking as possible.

If you’re reusing elastic from other paper hats, just staple it into place. To use ribbon, you can either cut two pieces and staple a piece to each side, near the bottom, or you can cut one longer piece and poke a hole on either side, near the opening of each hat. I did mine this way, running the ribbon inside the hat for a more secure hold as I will be dancing my ass off all night.

Add a sticker. I made stickers using an open source image of Moz by warungkopi. If you want to use my image, you can download it here, or use this multi-up file to print 2.5″ stickers. If you don’t have sticker paper, you can just print the images and cut them out or use a circle punch, then affix them to your hats with a glue stick. Or, you can make your own image, of course.